Day: July 3, 2013

Mealy mouthed: 1. hesitant to state facts or opinions simply and directly as from e.g. timidity or hypocrisy; 2. NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Bet you didn’t know that Cuomo’s name is now in the dictionary under the definition for “mealy mouthed.” The latest example of Lord Andrew’s mealy mouthedness on the topic of shale drilling and fracking in New York comes in response to a reporter’s question about Cuomo’s fellow Democrat, Pres. B.H. Obama calling natural gas “an effective transition fuel.” Lord Andy’s mealy mouthed response:Continue reading

Preferring to believe a lie over believing the truth (shale drilling is “evil”), Rabobank–a huge bank headquartered in The Netherlands but with major operations in the U.S.–has just announced it will not loan money to businesses involved with shale drilling. They’ll also ban loans to farmers who lease their land for drilling.

Rabobank’s action is outrageous and perhaps even illegal. We encourage you to cease doing all business with Rabobank and if you have an account with them, withdraw your money immediately. Let them know why you’re leaving their institution…Continue reading

Utica East Ohio Midstream–a joint venture between M3 Midstream, Access Midstream and EV Energy Partners–is in the process of building three natural gas processing plants in eastern Ohio. Two of the plants–Leesville (in Carroll County) and Kensington (in Columbiana County) will be cryogenic plants used to separate natural gas liquids from methane. MDN recently told you about delays in building the Kensignton plant (see M3 Midstream’s Kensington, OH NGL Plant Launch Date Slips). The third facility, located in Scio (Harrison County), will be a fractionation plant used to further separate NGLs from Kensington and Leesville into their constituent compounds, like ethane, propane and butane. Both Kensington and Scio are scheduled to go online sometime “this summer” (see Scio fractionation plant scheduled to go online this summer).

This story, however, is not about schedules for the launch of Utica East Ohio’s plants. It is about M3’s plans to build heliports at the Kensington and Scio plants…Continue reading

On Monday, July 1, new drilling rules for horizontal shale drillers went fully into effect in West Virginia after being developed over the past two years. WV law firm Lewis Glasser Casey & Rollins, PLLC provides this handy summary of the new and more important provisions:Continue reading

The West Virginia Natural Gas Horizontal Well Control Act, passed and signed into law in December 2011, directed the WV Dept. of Environment Protection (WVDEP) to conduct three studies. The third and final study was recently released, titled “Air Quality Impacts Occurring from Horizontal Well Drilling and Related Activities” (full copy embedded below).

According to the cover letter from the WVDEP, based on the findings in the study, no new regulations are required to control air pollution around drilling sites…Continue reading

Most people would view this as good news: The Pennsylvania Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) is within striking distance of becoming self-funding. Only $30 million (out of a $136.5 million budget) comes out of PA taxpayer pockets–just 22%. We’d call a self-funding government agency nothing short of a miracle! What would PA’s elected Democrats call it? A problem–because the self-funding comes from lease and royalty payments to the DCNR from Marcellus Shale wells drilled on state-owned land, and not from Democrat shell games in moving money around in Harrisburg to derive political power.

Currently about one-third of all state-owned land is leased for potential drilling with a voluntary moratorium on the rest first started by Gov. Rendell and later upheld under Gov. Corbett. Nearly 900 wells have been permitted on state-owned land, of which only 325 are drilled and producing (providing royalties)–so the DCNR may hit total self-funding at some point in the next few years when the other 575 wells get drilled. If partial self-funding has led to the current apoplexy in Harrisburg, total self-funding may lead to a full brain hemorrhage in PA’s elected Democrats…Continue reading

An excellent article on the Ohio Gas & Oil website takes a look at the critical role of compressors. In case you don’t know, compressors are needed at various points along natural gas pipelines to pressurize and keep the gas moving. The article uses the metaphor of compressors as the “heart” of natural gas production.

Let’s check out the old ticker for a better understanding of natural gas gathering and pipelining…Continue reading

According to an article titled “Hydraulic Fracturing and Information Forcing,” published in the latest issue of the online publication Ohio State Law Journal Furthermore, widespread shale drilling and fracking has begun to “force the systematic production and recording of data, which could lead to broad information forcing efforts.” Those information forcing efforts (information that government might “force” drillers and others to collect) includes baseline contamination data, requirements for better disclosure during drilling, and post-drilling sampling and impact studies. The article was written by Hannah J. Wiseman, assistant professor at the Florida State University College of Law.

Once again, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is interfering with a state’s right to regulate oil and gas drilling. The latest trespass is the EPA leaning on Ohio about an Ohio law that allows drillers to shield information about some of the proprietary chemicals they use:Continue reading